The Lost Battles Read online

  Fifteen years later, in 1509–10, when Michelangelo was in his mid-thirties, a rival artist portrayed him. Raphael was working on a wall painting of a gathering of ancient Greek philosophers, known as The School of Athens, in a room of the Vatican palace for Pope Julius II. Meanwhile, Michelangelo was at work for the same employer in the nearby Sistine Chapel. Raphael wittily included Michelangelo in his mural, brooding massively, leaning his head in his hand while he scribbled poetry on a sheet placed on the stone block beside him. His face is cast down in introspection beneath his unkempt black hair. This man is a stern, unyielding, dark presence among the graceful Greeks. He is emotional while they are rational. His powerful knees are naked beneath his short, shapeless purple tunic. On his feet are soft, comfortable, style-less boots.

  When Vasari’s Lives was published in 1550, most of the artists whose stories it tells were dead. One whose life is heroically told in its pages was, however, very much alive. Michelangelo’s life is the last, and the biggest, in the first edition. It is more than that: it is the book’s logical climax, for in Vasari’s eyes Michelangelo’s works represented the summit of artistic endeavour. Vasari was fascinated by the “celestial” Leonardo but reserved his ultimate praise for Michelangelo. Born in 1475, this Florentine sculptor, painter, architect, and poet was to live an epic life, dying in 1564, just short of his ninetieth year. When Vasari wrote his biography Michelangelo was still in the midst of his works, an old man with a young man’s energy. Vasari tells his story as a great adventure—how Michelangelo trained as a boy in the Florentine workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio till he was spotted by the ruler of Florence, “il Magnifico,” Lorenzo de’ Medici, while trying to carve a faun’s head in Lorenzo’s sculpture garden. How he amazed everyone with his youthful sculptures of Bacchus, the Pietà, and David until Pope Julius II asked him to design his tomb. This led to his painting the Sistine ceiling, a work unrivalled by any artist, living or dead. Michelangelo is simply the greatest artist in history, declares Vasari—he is nothing less than a gift from God.

  Michelangelo read this and was ambivalent. Having sent Vasari a poem praising him for bringing so many dead artists back to life, he got his own pupil Ascanio Condivi to take a break from making paintings based on Michelangelo’s drawings in order to write an official life of his master.

  Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo, published in 1553, set out to correct errors in Vasari—and to overturn facts Michelangelo didn’t like, such as Vasari’s entirely accurate claim that he had been Ghirlandaio’s apprentice. What makes it fascinating is the sense that Condivi is closely reporting Michelangelo’s own opinions and memories. One of the glimpses of his master that Condivi imparts concerns his favoured footwear: “In more robust days, many times has he slept in his clothes and with the ankle boots [stivaletti] on his legs that he has always worn on account of cramp, from which he has suffered constantly, as much as for any other reason.” So Michelangelo had “always” worn stivaletti, just as he does in Raphael’s painting, and just as St. Proculus does on the shrine in Bologna. The boy in short, soft boots that Michelangelo carved in 1494–5 is indeed a symbolic, expressive self-portrait that acknowledges his own nature, for which the word “fiery” would be a pathetic understatement. Pope Leo X, who as the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent had known Michelangelo in his youth and apparently didn’t wish to have him around too much when he became Pope, said he was “terribile,” terrifying and sublime. The young man’s face in Bologna holds the promise of trouble. One senses he will always find a cause that justifies his fury. It is marvellous, this fury. It is moral, one intuits—it is righteous. He will always see his enemies as moral inferiors.

  That Michelangelo invested his own anger, his own moral disdain in the figure of St. Proculus is astonishing, and unprecedented in the history of art. He is the first creator in history—certainly in the visual arts, surely in all the arts—to comprehensively, insistently break apart the smooth surfaces of craft with the force of personal and autobiographical emotion. His works are part of him in a radical and extreme way—when you look at a Michelangelo you feel the presence of his body working the stone, stretching up to paint the vault.

  This strange and magnificent conception of his relationship to his work, perfectly encapsulated in the figure of St. Proculus, means that Michelangelo’s emotions are still visible today. Even something as intangible and interior as his dislike of Leonardo da Vinci has resisted the oblivion of time.

  TWO

  The Fame Machine

  The antagonism between Leonardo and Michelangelo did not arise out of thin air. It was not that dapper Leonardo disliked young Michelangelo’s scruffy appearance, or that the avowedly celibate Michelangelo frowned on the older man’s confident parading of young assistants in front of everyone’s eyes—or rather, it was not only these personal differences. The tensions that exploded at the Spini were sparked by competition. It would have been miraculous had the two men liked one another, for in 1504 the two greatest artists of the Renaissance became direct rivals.

  Pull back from the two men standing there yards apart, one turning away in contempt, the other blushing; broaden the view until the old palace of the Spini no longer forms a backdrop to an intense encounter, but is simply a big brown cube surrounded by smaller pink and white boxes, and further back again—until it takes time to identify it among the hundreds of buildings that stuff the city walls of Florence on both sides of the Arno. The political centre of this walled city was to the east of the Spini, along narrow, dark streets overshadowed by tall medieval houses. Eventually an alley opened out onto the great space of Piazza della Signoria, the ceremonial public square of Florence, where crowds met to acclaim leaders and threaten trouble. Above its pink tiles with their white grid design growled the government building of the autonomous city-state that was Renaissance Florence.

  Everyone just called it “the Palace.” No one doubted which palazzo was meant; the most potent building in Florence was not to be confused with one of the classically inspired residences rich families kept building for themselves. No matter how many cornices the Strozzi, Rucellai, or Pitti put on their rooftops, their great houses would never be as central to the life of the city as the stronghold of state that soared over the salmon-pink piazza, its slender square watchtower crowned with a bronze lion balancing on a ball. Made of rugged, irregular blocks of stone whose sheer quantity becomes a poem of force, on what was a precise rectangular ground plan before it encroached eastward to form a more mystifying shape, the serious defensive intentions of the Palazzo della Signoria were apparent from the fact that it had only the narrowest of barred windows on its lower floor. Its massive walls were perforated by secret passages and hidden escape routes, its upper windows with their elegant arches notorious as the openings from which not a few traitors had been launched to their deaths.

  Donatello, Judith, circa 1446–60. Donatello’s fiercely expressive sculpture did not so much emulate as outdo the heroism of ancient Roman public art. (illustration credit 2.1)

  A bronze woman stood guard outside its arched doorway at the start of 1504. Donatello’s Judith glowed yellow and reflective on her undulating marble column, raising a curved sword that resembled a Turkish scimitar. Her head was covered in a heavy cloth and her figure wrapped in a long, loose dress—all bronze. Her eyes had no pupils and her face seemed blank and masklike, impassive, as she firmly gripped her victim, the sleeping drunkard Holofernes, by his mass of twisted hair, one long finger of her powerful hand hooked over the locks she pulled back from his forehead. Holofernes, his body as passive as if he were already dead, hung from her strong hand, his head twisted grotesquely on his trunk, his arm swinging and his legs dangling off the cushion he rested on as he waited, half-buried in her dress, for her to bring down the blade and decapitate him.

  Donatello’s Judith could tell a thing or two about the history of Florence.

  To the north of Piazza della Signoria, past the cathedral, on Via Larga (today’s Via Cavour
), was the one house that for fifty years had threatened to displace the Palace as the true centre of power in this small but arrogant polity. Now it stood despoiled, its owners in exile. Cosimo de’ Medici had commissioned his townhouse to a revolutionary design from the architect Michelozzo in the 1440s: behind its deliberately restrained façade—whose precisely shaped stone blocks were smooth to connote civilised ways on the upper storeys, rusticated to communicate strength at street level—was a luxurious and spacious inner world that for a while stood fair to become the court of Florence. A chapel fit for a king was adorned by Benozzo Gozzoli’s pageant-like Procession of the Magi. An Annunciation by Filippo Lippi decorated a doorway. Antonio Pollaiuolo’s Hercules raged on the walls and Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent kept Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano in his bedroom—among the other treasures of this private house that outdid for taste and probably for comfort the residence of any monarch of the day. In its courtyard stood Donatello’s statue of Judith, together with his bronze David. Both bore patriotic inscriptions identifying the Medici with the cause of Florentine freedom.

  The wealth of the Medici came from banking; their fortune was made when they won the Pope’s account. Cosimo il Vecchio translated money into influence to make himself, by 1444, the effective ruler of a city that nevertheless still considered itself a republic. On his tombstone Florence acknowledged him as “Pater Patriae,” Father of His Country. The triumph of the Medici was a crafty political achievement. Alliances and loyalties were nurtured, largesse distributed, ballots rigged—and enemies who couldn’t be bought ruthlessly crushed. Part of the game was to flatter republican illusions. Florence had grown from not much to become a great city in the thirteenth century. In Northern Europe at this time strong monarchies were unifying what would eventually become nations, but Italy lacked central authority. The Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire fought for dominance, but neither ever achieved it, instead dividing cities into pro-Papal Guelf and pro-Imperial Ghibelline factions, adding to the bloody lottery that was medieval urban life.

  Guelf or Ghibelline, the one constant in Italy’s political and social history was the city. The Mediterranean world has a propensity for cities that can be traced back into prehistory. Italy’s can be small or large, but they are never provincial, because each sees itself as a little world apart, even today, with all the cultural confidence and communal self-respect that implies. In the Middle Ages, cities created their own governments and their own little empires. Tuscany threw up a particularly dazzling constellation of neighbouring city-states: Pisa, Siena, Lucca, San Gimignano, Arezzo—and Florence. In paintings of the landscape of Tuscany, these warring communities were portrayed as fortified enclosures crowded with houses and towers on rival, rounded hilltops. The most seductive of all medieval visions of city life is a wall painting in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government depicts Siena as a colourful cluster of pink houses and soaring towers inside walls dividing it from its surrounding countryside, its contado, where peasants happily toil to provide it with everything it needs. On the city streets people are so happy they dance in a circle in front of shops laden with food. This is all the result of good government, and the best government, medieval Italians tended to believe, was a republic. In a republic all citizens had a say in the running of the state and all in principle might be called to hold office. In Florence, to be a political citizen a man had to be over thirty, and have at least one ancestor who had held office. But there were so many offices, all with comparatively brief terms of appointment, that most families who’d been settled long in the city were led by men who were cittadini.

  The antithesis of republican “liberty” was tyranny, the rule of one individual. In most Italian city-states in the course of the Middle Ages, tyrants took over. Wealthy families were happy to have a despot secure their property. By the early 1400s Florence was almost alone in maintaining its republican freedom, fighting a bitter war against the Visconti, despotic rulers of Milan, to defend it. Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors emerged as de facto hereditary rulers of Florence without appearing to end its republican tradition because the Palazzo della Signoria remained the seat of government, separated from their house, and because they supported and shared the rhetoric of republicanism. Judith stood witness to this: she had originally done her killing in the courtyard of the Medici house above fierce inscriptions, put up by the potent family, hoping that “citizens … might return to the republic.”

  In proclaiming their own love for the Republic, the Medici masked their destruction of Florentine freedoms. There were difficult moments, but for most of the fifteenth century their hegemony was complete. Then it crumbled overnight. Judith saw it, felt it. When the Medici fell in 1494 she was physically dragged from the Medici courtyard and placed outside Palazzo della Signoria, a symbol of revolution.

  When Lorenzo de’ Medici died, still only in his forties, in 1492, he was succeeded as capo of Florence by his son Piero. Unfortunately Piero lacked finesse, intelligence, and cunning. In 1494 the king of France invaded Italy, crossing the Alps with an army equipped with cannons. The French cannons were invincible. One Italian city after another fell as the French headed southward to contest the crown of Naples. As they entered Tuscany the hapless Piero rode out from Florence to cut a deal, without consulting the Palace. His attempt at flamboyant diplomacy had the disastrous result of surrendering important fortresses and allowing the French to give Pisa its freedom from Florentine rule. Returning home, Piero found the bells of the Palace ringing to call the people to arms against him. He and his brothers fled. Suddenly the Republic actually was a republic.

  Fra Bartolommeo, Portrait of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, circa 1498. This painter was a follower of Savonarola and has portrayed him heroically. (illustration credit 2.2)

  There was instant debate about what to do next. Some patricians wanted this republic to be carefully managed with methods like those the Medici had used. Others argued for broadening the government. The most influential voice turned out to be that of a prophet who got his political advice direct from God. For years now in his sermons in the Cathedral, the terrifying preacher Girolamo Savonarola had denounced tyrants and the abuse of wealth. Rich, tyrannical Lorenzo nonetheless promoted him to be prior of the city’s Dominican monastery, San Marco. Savonarola’s sermons were more than merely fiery; he claimed he was able to speak directly with God, who informed him of future events.

  The French invasion in 1494 seemed to vindicate Savonarola’s prophecies. He’d spoken of a “great scourge” coming into Italy—and here it was. He’d spoken of a sword, and here it was. Savonarola’s audiences now accepted him not just as an eloquent man of God but as an authentic prophet. This gave him extraordinary power. As the city’s political élite debated what to do after expelling the Medici, he spoke for God—and for the People, the Popolo, who loved him. He said he agreed with those who argued for establishing a Great Council, an assembly of all citizens. There was such a thing in Venice, and the divinely harmonious Venetian constitution seemed good to him.

  Savonarola’s word—God’s word—was law. The Great Council was born. It was not really like its Venetian equivalent, because Venice was an aristocratic society with a rigorously limited citizen body. In Florence, shopkeepers and craftsmen suddenly found themselves entitled to approve taxes and elect officials alongside wealthier citizens in the Great Council.

  Revolutions eat their children—this one burned its father. Savonarola’s preaching became too divisive, and by 1498 not everyone believed he was a true prophet. He kept denouncing Pope Alexander VI, repeating terrible rumours about the Borgia family from the pulpit, all but calling the Pope an Antichrist. His followers, scathingly nicknamed by their enemies Piagnoni—Weepers, Cry-babies—went around in pious adolescent fraternities burning “vanities.” He even spoke of giving women a political voice—for women were among his most devoted followers. Cynical anti-Savonarolan factions arose. With the Pope
threatening reprisals and the republic breaking apart, the Signoria ordered the monastery of San Marco to be attacked. After a brief, riotous siege Savonarola was arrested and brought to the Palace, where he was tortured until he confessed that he was not a genuine prophet. He and his two closest lieutenants were then taken out onto a wooden platform erected on Piazza della Signoria, shriven by priests who’d come specially from Rome, and led along a pier that jutted at an angle from the northwest corner of the Palace to a scaffold towering above the tightly policed crowds. The three men were hanged until they were dead and then a great fire was lit beneath them. It was kept blazing until their charred skeletons fell from the scaffold, and still longer, until there was nothing left but ashes. The ashes were carefully collected and taken to the Ponte Vecchio, where they were scattered into the Arno to prevent anyone retrieving relics. Even so, some people waded weeping into the river to try and skim the black dust off its surface.